Electrospinning of aliphatic biodegradable polyester

초록

Electrospinng is an attractive method to prepare micron to nano sized fibers for various polymers. The electrosun fibers have already been employed for composites, protecting clothing, filtration, catalysis, electronics, implants, tissue engineering, drug delivery, agriculture, and so on. It is well known that polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are aliphatic polyester synthesized by a various bacteria as an energy storage material. Among them, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) has been focused due to its excellent biocompatibility. Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) (PHB-HHx) is aliphatic biodegradable polyester, too. It was recently reported that some researcher succeeded the production of PHB-HHx on a large scale. So far as we know, however, the electrospinning of PHB-HHx has not been reported yet. Therefore, fabrication of three-dimensional PHB-HHx nanofibrous membranes has become a challenge. For the first time, we fabricated the nanofibrous P(HB-co-9%-HHx) membranes by using the unique and simple electrospinning method. There was no beads formation and the diameter of fibers was uniform.